


You Make Me Glow

by sohapppily



Series: Light Metaphors [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, blink and you miss it Sara mention, sleepy morning with The Boys™, teen rating is just for swearing but it's nothing other than what they say on the show so, they're not a Couple (yet) but there's something happening here, this is so soft and self indulgent i don't care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 10:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sohapppily/pseuds/sohapppily
Summary: Whenever they were on their ghoul excursions, Shane always had a snarky comment on the tip of his tongue and a twisted smirk to shoot at Ryan’s terror. He was mostly the same way in their unrecorded life, but they played up the banter for the sake of The Boys. Although it was a welcome respite for Ryan, seeing Shane in these settings with nothing but sleep on his features never failed to be a bit jarring.Ryan couldn’t look away.





	You Make Me Glow

**Author's Note:**

> i truly can’t believe that, not only am i writing RPF for the first time in like seven years (i’m old), but it’s RPF for fucking BUZZFEED EMPLOYEES. i’ve worked with their nyc office in my real professional life. i applied for a job there once. what the fuck.
> 
> i’ve fallen so far down the bfu rabbit hole and i had this in my head and had to get it out. they are so soft and i am so soft. this isn’t original at all. ghoul boys, please don’t ever read this thanks.
> 
> title from paradox by black cards.

Ryan blinked once, twice, and then fully opened his eyes. He sighed in relief, even though his back already ached from lying flat against the old mattress and his head was foggy from too little sleep. He’d survived another night.

This time it was in an old house in rural New York, which was the site of not one but _twelve_ grisly murders and suicides, spanning from colonial times until the late 1990s. A demon infestation was the alleged cause, as the current owner had told them at a diner the previous night. He refused to actually go in the house, and only held onto its ownership to save anyone else the trouble. Shane had been, of course, unfazed by this, citing coincidence and confirmation bias – “Think about how many people have lived here in the last three hundred-something years _without_ killing anyone!” – but Ryan was horrified that he’d gotten himself into this fucking situation _again_.

But none of that mattered now, because judging by their usual schedule, he had about forty minutes before he was out of this place forever, unscathed and unpossessed.

The ceiling above him looked even more water-stained and potentially condemnable in the morning light, but the way it filtered through the clouded windows coupled with the faded pastel decor gave the room a dreamy, almost beautiful feel.

He turned his head toward his sleeping cohost and nearly gasped. Shane was on his side, his serene face inches from Ryan’s own. The light streaming through the curtained window behind Shane glowed around his head, emphasizing what seemed to be dozens of shades of brown in his short locks. The eastward-facing window behind Ryan didn’t have a curtain, and the rising sun was shining directly on Shane’s features, soft and golden.

Ryan’s brain was filled with one thought: _TOUCH_.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment and thought, _What the fuck?_ He’d seen Shane in the morning plenty of times, but was never this… stunned. He didn’t know what it was, but he couldn’t look away.

Whenever they were on their ghoul excursions, Shane always had a snarky comment on the tip of his tongue and a twisted smirk to shoot at Ryan’s terror. He was mostly the same way in their unrecorded life, but they played up the banter for the sake of The Boys. Although it was a welcome respite for Ryan, seeing Shane in these settings with nothing but sleep on his features never failed to be a bit jarring. In a good way.

The corner of Shane’s mouth twitched up in a small smile, and Ryan couldn’t help but wonder what he was dreaming about. _Sara, probably_ , he thought, and was surprised to feel a tug of jealousy in the pit of his stomach at the notion.

Ryan tried to look away. He really did. Instead, his eyes flitted from the spindly veins in Shane’s slightly purpled eyelids, to the gentle rising and falling of his chest, to the barely-there smile on his lips, to the pale skin of his long neck peeking out of his heather grey sweater, to the way the sunlight threw the slope of his nose into relief against the white pillowcase and back around again.

Ryan didn’t know how much time he spent like that, but he did notice how much the sunlight’s angle had shifted since he’d first started looking.

Eventually, Shane stirred. Ryan panicked and did the only thing his dazed brain could think of: He closed his eyes and feigned sleep.

He heard Shane let out a long exhale and clear his throat softly. The bed shifted a bit, and Ryan imagined his tall friend stretching his legs out from their well-practiced fetal position.

A few moments passed, and Ryan tried to figure out if he should pretend to wake up on his own or wait until Shane moved again and pretend that’s what spurred it. Before he could come to a decision, his thoughts were stopped dead in their tracks.

He felt the tips of Shane’s fingers graze his cheek and it took everything in him to not gasp. It had to have been a mistake, he thought, just caught in the crosshairs of Shane moving his gangly Gumby arms, until he felt it again.

Shane gently trailed the tip of one finger down Ryan’s jaw, and the warm yellow behind Ryan’s eyelids seemed to glow even brighter. The finger pulled away, then landed again between his eyebrows. Ryan felt a thrill go down his spine as Shane traced the bridge of his nose. Shane continued his journey downward, two fingertips coming to just barely rest against Ryan’s lips, which parted slightly of their own volition.

Ryan heard Shane sigh quietly, and couldn’t help but notice that it sounded… wistful. After a few more moments, the touch retreated, and Ryan missed it immediately.

Shane cleared his throat again and shifted heavily, which Ryan took as his cue to wake up. He opened his eyes to see Shane, propped up on his elbows, looking right at him.

“Morning,” Ryan said softly, blinking a few times as his eyes readjusted to the light, the harshest of which was now blocked by Shane’s head.

“Morning,” Shane replied, not breaking their eye contact. “We survived.”

“We did,” Ryan said with a small laugh. Then, feeling emboldened by the surreality of the morning so far, he asked, “Were you, like, touching my face just now?”

Shane paused for just a second too long. “No. Why?”

“Nothing,” Ryan said quickly, confused by how disappointed he was with Shane’s reply. “Just thought I felt something as I was waking up, I guess.”

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Shane said, drawing out the O sound with a mock-spooky vibrato as he stretched his arms up and out.

“Shut up,” Ryan mumbled, ducking to avoid Shane's stretch then scooting himself up against the headboard.

“Did Mr. Socci not mention that when he was telling us about all the ghouls in his little haunted house here last night?” Shane asked, his tone still teasing. “No Mysterious Ghost of Face Touching?”

“No Ghost of Face Touching,” Ryan confirmed, suspecting that this was Shane’s plan all along. Just another ploy to freak him out. “But if there was, we’d hopefully have caught it on camera.”

He watched as Shane turned slowly to the tripod camera in the corner of the room, as if he’d only just remembered it was there. For a moment, he actually looked… scared?

Shane didn’t reply. He nearly vaulted out of the bed and crossed the room to the camera in a few quick strides. He pressed stop, snapped the viewfinder shut and turned the camera off, still looking unsettled.

“Hey, do you want me to go through the sleep footage?” Shane asked abruptly. “You always complain about how boring it is to sift through before we hand it off to editing.”

That was all Ryan needed to know that Shane wasn’t pulling some elaborate prank.

“Nah, I’ll do it,” Ryan replied, sliding out of the bed. “You’ve got enough to do without having to skim through hours of me randomly waking up in a panic. Thanks, though.”

Shane nodded once, grabbed his toothbrush, toothpaste and a bottle of water from the top of his duffle, then stalked off to the grimy en-suite.

Ryan stared after him, smiling slightly as he ran his fingertips across his cheek.

* * *

Later that day, Ryan sat in their hotel room alone, hunched over his laptop. Shane and the rest of their skeleton crew decided to explore the small town before they had to take their evening flight out of some middle of nowhere airport, but Ryan insisted he needed a nap before packing up. Really, he needed some time alone with last night’s footage.

_“Aaand, she’s recording!” on-camera Shane said, looking directly into the lens and giving the viewer a thumbs up._

_“She?” Ryan asked, his voice quiet in the background of the shot._

_“Yeah, I’ve decided this camera’s a girl,” Shane replied matter-of-factly, his voice growing quieter as he walked toward the bed they were about to share._

_“What’s her name?” Ryan replied, clearly disinterested as he scrolled through his phone._

_Shane grinned at Ryan, who was still engrossed in what now-Ryan remembered as a particularly interesting twitter thread theorizing on how Rey could still possibly be a Kenobi, then turned his grin to the camera. “Sallie.”_

_On camera-Ryan looked up from his phone and shot a glare at Shane, causing now-Ryan to laugh. “Oh, fuck you, dude.”_

Ryan smiled to himself as he scrubbed through the rest of their bedtime routine and their sleeping, jotting down timestamps of moments that could work as a transition shot in his Notes app, not wanting to get distracted by actual editing in his limited alone time. Finally, he reached morning.

He watched his onscreen self wake up and turn toward Shane, skipping forward to avoid the reality of just how long he’d spent looking at the other man. He paused as soon as he saw his eyes close again.

Ryan took a deep breath, then pressed play.

Slowly, Shane’s eyes opened. He smiled softly, and Ryan felt his heart skip a beat. He watched as Shane reached out a hand, barely ghosting his long fingers over Ryan’s features. Ryan brought his own fingers to his cheek, remembering the feeling he was watching play out on screen.

The smile on Shane’s face spread even wider, and Ryan wanted to scream at his past self, _open your eyes!_ At the very least, he was glad the camera was angled perfectly toward Shane’s face and not his own.

Shane looked down at his fingers resting on Ryan’s lips, and his face fell. Ryan’s mind supplied the soft sigh he’d heard in that moment, inaudible to the camera.

Then Shane pulled his hand away and pushed up onto his elbows, and Ryan watched himself pretend to wake up. Their conversation played out as Ryan remembered it, and he laughed to himself as Shane posited his ghost theory. His laugh stopped abruptly when Shane turned to the camera, and Ryan saw how truly terrified he’d looked in that moment. He was glad, for Shane’s sake, that no one else was seeing this footage.

He glanced at the door of their hotel room, paranoid about getting caught even though he knew Shane would text him when they were on their way back. When it stayed closed, he turned back to his laptop.

Carefully, he selected the footage from when he first woke up until Shane stopped the camera. He copied it to a new file, then exported it in a complicated hierarchy of folders at least ten deep on his personal external hard drive. He typed and deleted a few file names – Shane, face, why the fuck am i saving this – before settling on _good morning.mp4_ , then hit save.

He went back to the raw footage, scrolled back to just before sunrise, and deleted everything from that point on. With a small smile, he pulled out his phone to text Shane.

> **_Couldn’t nap, decided to look thru last night's sleep footage. I think the battery died. It cuts out before sunrise._ **
> 
> _Bummer! Maybe it's losing some charge power. We got some vlog stuff after we woke up right?_
> 
> **_Yeah we’ve got enough for morning, just no waking up._ **
> 
> _Too bad you didn’t catch your good morning ghostie on camera!_

Ryan laughed as the three typing dots turned into a sleeping emoji, a ghost emoji and a pointing finger. _That's awfully brave_ , Ryan thought. He looked back at good morning.mp4 and double-clicked, bringing the footage up to rewatch.

> **_Yeah, too bad._ **

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know how video editing software other than imovie works so sorry for the clunkiness of the ending.
> 
> also the house they’re in isn’t a real place. it’s an exaggerated version of a house a few minutes from mine where shit keeps going down. come over ghoul boys.
> 
> ~~edit 6.14.18: i am officially working on a continuation of this so keep those eyes peeled.~~
> 
> edit 6.21.18: [part two is live!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956560)


End file.
